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Friday, 16 March 2012

Breaking News: Nigeria government reaches out to Boko Haram!

President Jonathan of Nigeria﻿

Nigeria's government has in the last week held its first indirect peace talks
with Islamist sect Boko Haram, meeting mediators to discuss a possible
ceasefire, political and diplomatic sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Two people close to Boko Haram have been carrying messages back and forth
between the sect's self-proclaimed leader Abubakar Shekau and government
officials, the sources, who asked not to be named, said.
It was not clear whether any mediators met with President Goodluck Jonathan
himself. A presidency spokesman said he could not immediately comment.

Boko Haram has said it wants to impose sharia, or Islamic, law across a
country split equally between Christians and Muslims. The group has killed
hundreds this year in bomb and gun attacks, mostly in the majority Muslim north
of Africa's top oil producer.
"BH (Boko Haram) has mentioned a conditional ceasefire but it wants all its
members released from prison. The government sees this as unacceptable but is
willing to release foot soldiers," a traditional leader and civil rights
activist involved in the talks told Reuters, asking not to be named.
"It is the first time a ceasefire has been mentioned, so it is a massive
positive, but given the lack of trust a resolution is still a way off," he
added.
Jonathan's national security adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi, told
Reuters in January that Nigeria was considering making contact with moderate
members of the shadowy Boko Haram via "back channels".

A source at the presidency confirmed that efforts are being made to reach out
to the sect's negotiators, but that direct talks had not yet begun. A
well-respected Islamic cleric has been contacted to reach out to them, he
said.
Shekau has appeared in two video tapes posted on YouTube in January claiming
leadership of the sect and making bellicose threats against security
forces.
Since then, however, Nigeria's military has made some key arrests and senior
members of the sect have been killed, while the sophistication and scale of its
attacks have fallen since a wave of deadly strikes from November to
January.
Two security sources said one of the people involved in the negotiations was
a close ally of Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram who died in police
custody in 2009, triggering a widespread violent uprising by the sect. They were
both members of a group called the Spring Council of Sharia.
Shekau has not said the group was interested in dialogue in his videos and
neither has the group's spokesman, Abu Qaqa, who holds sporadic telephone
interviews with local media in the sect's heartland of Maiduguri.
But they have not ruled them out completely either.

DIFFERENT FACTIONS
Jonathan told Reuters in January that the government was open to dialogue but
said sect members were hidden and therefore direct talks were unlikely.

He noted that talks to resolve the conflict in the oil producing Niger Delta,
that ended with an amnesty in 2009, were different in that officials knew who
the militants' leaders were and how to contact them.
Jonathan had previously drawn fire for treating Boko Haram as a purely
security matter, rather than as a problem requiring a political solution that
would address northern grievances.
The military's efforts to stem the sect's insurgency have had mixed results
in the past, with human rights groups saying heavy-handed tactics have worsened
resentment of authorities.
But more recently there have been arrests of senior figures and some have
died in clashes with security forces, security sources say. They include Abu
Qaqa, Nigeria's secret service have said, although a man claiming to be him
phoned journalists to say it was another senior figure.
The security services paraded five suspected members of Boko Haram on
Wednesday before the press, who they said were behind the kidnapping of a Briton
and Italian in May, adding that the ringleader had died in custody.
The group has not managed to launch a widescale, coordinated attack since one
in Kano that killed 186 people in January, reverting to crude bomb attacks and
drive by shootings.
"I wouldn't say the back has been broken on Boko Haram but certainly these
high profile arrests and deaths will have weakened its position," a foreign
security expert in Abuja said.
"The most telling sign is that we haven't seen the more sophisticated,
coordinated attacks for some time."
The group's factional nature means it will be difficult to negotiate any
ceasefire deal with all elements.
"The difficulty is: who do they actually represent? Boko Haram is a big label
for many different command groups. Are they all being represented at these talks
or just some of them?" said Peter Sharwood-Smith of security consultants Drum
Cussac.
"It's just really hard to know who's who ... and if these talks are going to
achieve much."
Shekau is believed to be in command of units carrying out the majority of
attacks, most of which occur in the northeast.
"Even though dialogue is going on with just one faction of the group, it
looks like the most high profile one," a foreign diplomat specialising in
security in northern Nigeria told Reuters.
"Even some sort of peace deal would ease the pressure and allow the military
to mop up more of the breakaway groups."